In this release, the KDE team focused on stability and completeness of the Desktop experience. More than 16,000 bugs have been fixed, and many feature requests have been filled. The result for the user is a system that feels faster, takes less time to "think", and works more reliably. The large number of bug fixes goes accompanied with many parts that have got an extra portion of tender loving care. Plasma 4.5.0's new notification system is one example here. It is designed to get less in your way, yet to support your workflow as smoothly as possible. Visually, the striking monochromatic icons make for a more consistent look in the notification area. A highlight of the KDE Applications 4.5.0 is surely Marble, which can now be used for map routing as well as viewing. The Konqueror web browser can now also use the WebKit engine to render its content. The KDE Development Platform 4.5.0 offers a new generic cache for applications that need high-speed access to certain data, such as icons or other pre-rendered artwork. The new KSharedDataCache speeds up loading of many components, while the new HTTP scheduler is optimized for concurrent access to web servers, and makes loading of pages in Konqueror and other parts using the KIO HTTP mechanism faster.

Today's releases are the first in the 4.5 series and will be followed with updated versions approximately monthly that will focus on fixing bugs. The next feature releases are planned for January 2011. If you would like to test-drive 4.5.0, you can do so by installing the packages that should be made available by your operating system vendor. You can also choose to build 4.5.0 from source, the nitty-gritty of that can be found on TechBase. For the impatient, there is also a Live CD available.

Perhaps you are coming from plain 4.4. If it's broken for you, now you can interactively fix this going to the Activities switch board. You'll have likely four activities. Delete all of them, except one.

You'll see how your activity enlarges, and contains 4 different viewpoints. Now you can design your desktop, and you'll never have trouble with per-desktop activity setting after this. This is also much better than old "fixes" (recreating plasmarc, praying for it to not recreate a broken setup)

The side effects of this are cool. Now you can have entire SETS of activities, switchable with Meta+Tab (one set spans through all your virtual desktops, Meta is the Windows key name under Linux).

First, I am not a programmer, I do wish Linux OS to increase nubmer of its user.
I think KDE uses better tech then GNOME (c vs c++).
These are my personal comments of the KDE 4.5, downloaded from kde live page.

booting: why does it takes so long?
And then you have to stare at the boot screen with 5 icons, of which last is unproprtional?
An easy fix. And fire your designer.
I guess services are starting or something. Why not show desktop, and load them in the background?
Surely most people dont need print server as soon as logged in.

So after I login, cd keeps loading and then I get error:
Nepomuk service error.

If you want to force nepomuk (btw change name or add some desription to it) down the users throat, at least
ask them on boot if they want nepomuk enabled or not.

Default Theme: Cold theme? Really? That is no way to win users.
Please change background wallpaper to something warmer. This feels like, welcome to the frozen land.

Again look on ubuntu, win7, mac os x? Are they all wrong?

Menu: It takes 3 clicks to get to the editor.
Clicking is not what user want. Look at Linux mint menu. 2 MOUSEOVERS.
Win xp 3 mouseovers. (first is all programs)
It seem kde start menu is modeled after win7?
win 7 3 clicks, or 1 mouseover and 2 clicks. win 7 is not that good, although adding search is nice.

And back arrow? You have to CLICK on something to go back. Lame. And it looks ugly. Everything is on mouseover, 2 level deep max.
One is better.
If you want to keep arrow for back move, at least make it on mouse over, or
reset menu on app click. (Move to root categories)

Why not move everything in internet in internet submenu.
Apss/Interner/Konqueror (Web browser), not
Apss/Interner/Web browser/Web browser
You have duplication.

Most people don't bother changing options.
If it does not work by default your design failed. If I have to look in the manual/on the internet to
make desktop act as in every other OS, design failed.
You want something special great. Ask the user something like:
Hi we have this great new concept of desktop, would you like to test it? yes/no. And make sure there is and easy way back to normal.

What is newspaper activity? Nothing happens when I select it.
What is the difference between "desktop" and "plain desktop"?
Why does not any of these two show files I have in my desktop folder.
It seems folder view is the closest to "desktop" as used in other oses.

Kde need to get non-geek designer. To get rid of the attitude: look what I can do with my programming skill.
IOS, ubuntu, mac os , even win7 is far away from them.

It seems people at KDE are trying hard to show they are different. In the end they'll be the only one using their software.

I am not sure it is kde or open suse, but I cannot mount windows hdd. I get error no device available, in an
ugliest message window I've seen.
Its about quarter of the screen big, it has title, then empty part, then message, and after that
something sign like two small arows over and under the line(?) and X after that? When I click on X window close after 2 sec?

desktop pager icons are too small.
That 'i' in the circle near the scissors icon is barely noticable. Is it supposed to be like that?

Add some bookmarks of the KDE site to konqueror.

If I want to listen to some mp3 what do I use? Amarok behemonth? Are you kidding?

Alos what is kde wallet and why would I want to use it with Amarok?

What are those + and minus when I hover over file? Not tooltip info. Easy fixable.
Add some icon to unmount removable device in dolphin, like it exists in mac and ubuntu. You again seem to use windows method of systray, multiple clicks. Or, keep both

why the restart counter? For the undecided?

This is my opionion, and if you publish software, you cant just read the good comments.
You cannot expect all the users to be programmers, so please don't say "Fix it yourself".

If you dont have designers, or cant hire one, post a contest, where people can send their ideas.
You ll prove you are listening to users (Is that important to you?) and that you dont have
Not invented here syndrom.

Hey I'm the guy you want to fire. :) it wont be easy :) as I'm a over worked volunteer, like most of KDE :).

Any way, wont say you don't have a point in many of the remark's you point out, specially on the menu I was never a fan of it (note we do offer other options).

In the splash screen... next release we will have a new one, hey this one was not that bad :D.

In the wallpapers... again next release a new one, we change them every 2 releases, the wallpaper is kinda important as we do all the branding around it, so it needs defined branding values we can reuse, look at this site as well as other kde sites you will notice how we kinda recycle the wallpaper to create a uniform brand. (but no i'ts not my proudest wallpaper yet).

The "i" notice that its if it is barely noticeable it as nothing to give you, so maybe the fact that it dims of is a good thing, wen it does have something to show it does brighten up.

The plus an minus on dolphin.... use them you will understand fastly enough :), very useful on tablets.

Not sure you ever done design, but making random questions to general public produces very bad inconsistent results, and the overhead of the process is greatly larger than simply doing it yourself.
Design needs guidance, good overview and a goal. So some one as to do it.
I do need more help, so more quality designers that can work in a team is highly appreciated, in the future we hope we can start to do some fine grain polishing to apps.
You appear to have some nifty ideas join us on #oxygen to make a better desktop tomorrow... (personally I believe that we already come a long way since the 3.x days).

Any way thanks for your comment's they look genuine and a good insight how some one new to KDE looks at it. I will take them into account...(remember this is the result of many sensitivities it will never be 100% like you want it to be, but with work you can push it to be better for more people)

OK, sorry if that was a bit harsh. And also, reading my text, I see kde write needs spelling checker. :)

But those icons, they've been like that since, ... 4.3? I can't believe nobody noticed.
Anyway, why do we need splash screen anyway? Ubuntu/Gnome seems to load much faster. No splash screen there. Also I like their notifications. Simple, not, hm, atacking like. :)

About wallpaper, it is not badly designed, it just seems uninviting, or cold somehow. That's all.

About design, I meant more like polls, on kde site. And feedback in KDE itself. Something like firefox 4 beta has.

On the issue of wallpapers: I just don't understand why we keep using abstract images for our default wallpapers.
They're usually pretty well done (or even downright awesome), but that doesn't change the fact that even someone as technically minded as me will have a much more positive first impression when seeing some relaxing greenish photo of a meadow instead of blue stripes or circles or whatever.

In my eyes, the abstract wallpapers scream "This is for techies! This doesn't belong into your living room."

Actually, I've noticed that I have to make a conscious effort to look at the windows and widgets of a screenshot - if I don't my feelings are dominated by what I think of the wallpaper. It's a little sad, but I don't think I'm alone in this.

abstract images? :) I gess same reason most desktops do...
Real life images get boring faster IMO.
Pus in teh case of KDE, the branding strategy as been revolving around the wallpaer, as we dont have the money to create a worlwide campain that can create familiarity with the pruduct, we instead try to use our biguest banner (the wallapaper) and use it as a base of branding with recognizable elements that are used in all parts of the external projection of kde. Most obvius example are the main kde websites...

I've just written and then erased a lengthy answer. This really isn't the right place to discuss such things and I don't want to come off as too full of myself or anything like that - I really love your work. Also, there's few facts with these topics and a lot of opinions.

So I'll just say that I think that pretty pictures that feel inviting and non-technical might be even more important than branding to lure most ordinary users. The chances of somebody coming into contact with KDE more than once without actively seeking it out are still pretty slim nowadays, at least where I live. I'd be amazed if anybody went "Oh, I must know this somehow, I've seen those blue circles somewhere before". And there's quite a few Linux users we lost to other desktops who won't care about the branding, either.

To get to business desktops and similar larger enrollments the branding is useful, of course - though even there I think it's more important what the distributions do than what KDE itself does.

Probably dbojan's suggestion of changing the main color to something warmer is a good idea. Your original oxygen mockups used a lush, dark green if I remember correctly - and they looked awesome. We've started to get rid of the abundant Ks, why not do the same with all that blue? If anybody could do that it would be you :)

just to again say thank you for you guys comments, I fully agree with your comments, except on the count of kde not being visible, it might not be were you live but this is not an universal truth, there are several places were kde is doing incredibly well and were allot of people have seen our branding values...
In the current wallpaper wallpaper I tried to get a sunrise feeling to it, something new and exiting coming up on the horizon, I think I mostly failed :D, Its not that it is terrible bad, but it does come up as a bit cold and uninviting... We will try to get it better next time.

Any one is invited to be a part of the creation of the design experience in kde. Join us on #oxygen.

I do many little surveys, (mostly in my blog), specially on the base direction we should take, but all pools need to be taken with a grain of salt, the people that usually like to say something do not represent the average user, it represents a certain type of user that is vocal.

In the icon pools we sometimes do, we created tools to help us with that, but to do so kinda reduced the spectrum of possible answers witch might not be the best thing for all design issues, so I tend to trust my experience in judging user feedback on what they really mean wen they say I don't like this or that, because as you know perception and reality are 2 very different things.

Just upgraded on OpenSuse 11.3 from 4.4 to 4.5 and I must say... I'm impressed. KDE 4.5 is a lot faster!
Sadly KRunner seems to have problems with web-shortcuts.
"gg:" or any other shortcut refuses to work... nothing happens...
("Web shortcuts" are activated)